


Ramble On

by quadrotriticale



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Eat Me, M/M, POV Castiel, POV Second Person, but im also really invested in this fucking ship so check it, here i am and im not leaving, personally i hate the destiel tag, yallre getting some nice 2nd person pov content from ME
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-16 18:08:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14816255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quadrotriticale/pseuds/quadrotriticale
Summary: No one speaks and Sam doesn’t stir, and you marvel at the cyclical nature of streetlights when the car pulls into a town. You could state the precise geographical location if you wanted to, but you can’t say you know the name, you don’t really know what humans call the place you’re in, you think you missed the signs.





	Ramble On

**Author's Note:**

> hey so i have a billion and one supernatural headcanons that you can 100% talk to me about because ill talk about it for 6 days but i use them in my fics so Watch Out. todays notable ones are cas is really shitty at words (hes not 100% nonverbal but hes like u get me) and also he likes to pick up shiny rocks. i love him  
> and i was editing this and i was like woah thats fucking rambly but its fine thats just my whole schtick so tldr the title is a huge horrible joke @ myself and if you havent listened to it zeps ramble on is so fucking good

You sit in the back of Dean's car with your eyes fixed on the changing landscape out the window. His brother sleeps in the passenger’s seat (good, you think, Sam hasn’t slept in days and Dean was getting worried) and he drives, the car’s speakers quietly playing whatever cassette he’s decided to pop in, you don’t know the names of his songs as well as he does, but the transitions are getting familiar to you. This is the soft one, you recognize it for the warmer guitar sounds, but you couldn't name the songs or the artists if you tried, besides Led Zeppelin's Ramble On, which is playing when you pass a sign denoting the speed limit. (75 MPH, you think, too fast.) He taps his fingers on the steering wheel, occasionally glances at his brother or at you in the rear view, and you think the silence is supposed to be uncomfortable but you find it relaxing. Sam snores quietly, you watch the stars and the trees and the streaks on the ground, and Dean hums along to his music, quiet, like he’s trying not to disturb the peace. You don’t have to sit with them. You could be anywhere you liked if you wanted, but you need a break and you find the confined space of the Winchester’s car more comforting than you can articulate. No one speaks and Sam doesn’t stir, and you marvel at the cyclical nature of streetlights when the car pulls into a town. You could state the precise geographical location if you wanted to, but you can’t say you know the name, you don’t really know what humans call the place you’re in, you think you missed the signs. You like the mystery. 

He pulls the car up to a motel, gets out as quietly as he can so as not to disturb Sam, and goes in to book a room. You get out of the car but you don’t trail him, instead turning your eyes up to the stars and exhaling. The town is small, not like the big cities with their light pollution, so you can see the pinpricks of light above you, understand for a moment why humans enjoy them so much. The ghost of your breath curls up like smoke from a chimney and you watch it go until it disappears, repeat the action just to study it again. You don’t need to breathe, you just like the fog it makes when it’s cold. You dig your hands into your pockets, curl your fingers around the pebbles, coins, other little trinkets you’ve collected, and watch stars as you wait for Dean. He takes his time, flirts casually with the receptionist, and comes back only after he’s checked the room. He wakes his brother carefully- Sam looks at him blearily, asks him wordlessly where they are and shuffles towards the room once he’s been informed. You’re vaguely aware that he does little more than flop onto the mattress and bury himself in blankets when he gets inside, vaguely aware that he’s asleep before Dean looks at you, vaguely aware that Dean himself hasn’t slept in days and vaguely aware that you, too, are tired. Sleep isn't something you need, but the desire to lay down and rest coils around the edges of your consciousness, and you decide you'll consider it. 

You walk over to him- walk, really, you’re getting better at looking like it’s natural- keep your hands buried in the pockets of your coat, thumb a particularly smooth stone, the origin of which currently escapes you. He leans against the side of his car and studies the same stars you’d been watching before. You, instead, study his face. He has a smudge on his cheek, dark circles under his eyes, faint freckles on his nose. You can see him- really see him, all the minutia and all the little bits that humans don't get to see unless they're blessed (or, as some regard it, cursed) with special gifts, but you like looking at his skin. He is dirty and messy and scarred and you find yourself consistently amazed by the complexity of him. His freckles don’t form discernible patterns, the smudges he leaves on his face and on his hands are never in the same places, his scars have no structure. He's some kind of masterpiece with all his imperfections, and you find yourself, as you often do, taken aback by intricacy of him. 

He asks you why you’re still here and you tell him you have nowhere else to be. He asks you what you’re going to do tonight and you tell him you don’t know, but he should sleep, and you’ll be here when he needs you. He doesn’t say it, but he doesn’t want to sleep. He doesn’t say it, but he’s been having nightmares again. You consider dream walking, consider using your grace to calm his mind, let him rest. You don’t have it completely ruled out when he calls you says goodnight and calls you Cas. Cas isn’t your name, but he never calls you your name. You don’t think humans call things by their names a lot, so you don’t argue with him. You’re Cas to him and he’s been calling you that since he properly met you, and you think that’s okay. 

You spend the next six hours watching the stars somewhere quiet and feeling smaller than you are. You’re very small in your vessel and the sky is very large and you wonder to yourself if this is how humans feel, if this is how they've always felt. You wonder if you aren’t so different from them, if that’s okay and what you'd do if it isn't. You could be helping your friends with their case, but you’re quiet and you’re curious and you want to see the sky as they see it, want to understand the appeal that the stars have to them. You’ll help them in the morning, you think. 

In the morning, you find the Winchesters at a diner, and then back in their motel room, and then back in their car. They do their investigations and their fighting and you trail them if they need your help, but they don’t, not usually. Dean has Sam’s back and Sam has Dean’s, and although you worry, you know they’re more than capable of taking care of themselves. 

And so, when it’s over, you trail them again, spend some time seated in the back of their car, some more time sitting with them at one of the tables in one of their rooms or in the bench seats in small greasy diners, in a places with names you don’t know and skies that look only slightly different. Dean hums along to his music and Sam falls asleep in the front seat, and sometimes, if you’re paying enough attention to the inside of the car to catch his attention, Dean talks quietly to you. He doesn’t say much of note, talks about media he likes and acts baffled when you tell him you don’t know what he’s talking about, tells you one day he’s going to sit you down and make you watch the Twilight Zone, or Frankenstein, or the X Files. ‘You have to watch it,’ he insists, and you tell him you will and then you don’t because you think, if you do, he’ll stop talking about it. You’re worried that if you watch everything he wants you to watch, listen to everything he wants you to listen to, experience everything he tells you you must, he’s going to run out of things to talk to you about. 

Sometimes you hang around long enough to catch Dean sprawled out on a bed in a motel, channel surfing. On occasion, he’ll glance over to you, ask you what you’re doing, even if it’s very clear. You answer him, and he goes back to flipping through channels. If you’re lucky, and you seldom are, he settles on something, puts the remote down, and calls to you excitedly. ‘Cas,’ he’ll say, launching into an excited spill of words that you have a little difficulty processing but get the gist of nonetheless. It’ll be one of the movies he wants you to see, or a rerun of one of the shows he’s been meaning to show you, and you’ll watch obligingly, try to react in ways that keep the light in his eyes just a little bit longer. You don’t always succeed- you don’t always know how he wants you to act, but you still like to watch things with him. He’s always over enthusiastic, spends most of the program explaining to you what’s going on and how it’s going to affect what happens next, tells you things that happen previously, tells you things that are going to happen. You enjoy them in your own way, but you think he appreciates when you give him reactions. Sam will come back and Dean will tell him what you’ve been watching in nearly as much detail as he’s been telling you, and you think it bothers you a little more than it should. 

You’re never really sure how to act around him, but you think he’s gotten used to you. You’re not sure, but you think he might even like your presence- you know it calms him, that’s inevitable since you go out of your way to be calming, but you think, or rather, you hope, that he’s grown to like having you around on his own. You’ve certainly grown to like being around him. 

You aren’t special. You’re one of too many angels, you’re one piece of some larger whole, to be on your own is to feel isolated, like you’re lost in a fog that presses on your ears instead of your eyes. You can’t hear them, and no matter what length of time you spend away you know it would feel better to go back, to not have to think, to be little more than a piece of something larger. But, you know, as a part of Heaven’s hive, Dean is beyond your reach, Dean isn’t something you can have. You lose the quiet and the comfort of his back seat and the streaks out his windows, you lose the lights in his eyes and you lose the hum of his voice. You lose the stars in the sky and the feeling of being small, too, you lose the curl of your breath in cold air and you lose the warm, full sensation of being loved. You lose everything you’ve done and everything you’ve experienced, and you lose the self you’ve built from nothing. 

This is you. You are small and the universe is big and some force, fate or your father or systems perhaps greater than him, connected you to a man with green eyes and dirt smudged skin. He is yours and you are his and you weren’t supposed to fall in love with him but you did, you did, with the way he smiles and laughs and tells you about anything he can think of in the middle of the night. 

He is human, and you are going to outlive him, live the length of his life dozens upon dozens of times before you're finally finished. He never tells you he loves you, at least not sober, but he doesn’t need to. You never tell him either, because you don't know how to work the words into a form that you like, but you don't really need to. You like to think that he knows.


End file.
